Going Down Up North —

Pfizer caught “gaming the system,” loses Viagra patent in Canada

But US consumers will keep paying monopoly prices until 2019.

Pfizer's legal monopoly on one of its top-selling drugs just got shredded in Canada. The Canadian Supreme Court has ruled 7-0 the company should have its patent taken away because the drug company attempted to "game" the system, grabbing a patent without disclosing what their invention really was.

Pfizer was able to acquire its Canadian patent without naming the compound required to make Viagra, namely, sildenafil citrate. The Canadian patent system, like all patent systems, is a kind of bargain between patentees, who are given a limited monopoly on a particular product or process, and the public, which is supposed to benefit from the disclosure of a new invention, the justices noted in their opinion.

"Pfizer had the information needed to disclose the useful compound and chose not to release it," the ruling said. "As a matter of policy and sound statutory interpretation, patentees cannot be allowed to 'game' the system in this way."

The company that successfully busted the Pfizer patent is Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals, the world's largest generic drug company. Generic Viagra will probably hit the Canadian market in short order and cut Pfizer's profit in that country to almost nothing.

Analysts who spoke to Reuters about the ruling noted that losing the Canadian market isn't really big enough to move the needle for a company as large as Pfizer. Still, Canadian sales of Viagra are about $80 million according to The Globe and Mail, and Pfizer will likely be saying goodbye to most of that revenue. The drug is Pfizer's sixth most selling medicine, with global sales of $2 billion.

In the US, Pfizer's patent rights on Viagra were originally set to expire in 2012. But when generic companies moved to enter the market, Pfizer piled on a "method-of-use" patent over the same drug, set to expire in 2019. A federal judge upheld that patent after a bench trial last year, so Pfizer will be the only company allowed to sell sildenafil in the US for at least seven more years, and prices will remain high.

Viagra sales in the US have still dropped off somewhat, because it faces stiff competition from other patented drugs such as Eli Lilly's Cialis.

...holy shit, is that "method-of-use" patent seriously just "a guy with erectile issues takes Viagra"? Because that's what it looks like on a cursory examination (and given that it uses phrases like "Fresh frozen human penis was obtained..." I'm not sure I want to take a harder look at it).

What the hell kind of shitty patent system do we have where you can patent a drug, and then when the patent expires, you can patent how to administer the same drug, thereby preventing anyone else from using it?

Does it bother anyone else that in the USA pills to help old rich men get their dick hard are good but birth control pills are bad?

Sure it bothers us a lot.Washington is a stinking pile of Corruption.One of these days and probably this Century those Rich Pricks will get just what is coming to them.I would love to live long enough to see that sight.

The worst part is, its not just Pfizer and its not just Viagra. This is one of the reasons your medical system bankrupts people, because your patent laws allow drug companies to profit immensely off the sick and the weak, all in the name of "capitalism" and "freedom". Our taxes arent that far off from the US, and yet we spend less per capita on health care AND provide basic coverage to everyone, guaranteed and paid for via our taxes. Keep that in mind Americans, if you could manage to get your politicians to budget properly(AKA spend less on torture and war) and change a few patent laws regarding various meds, you guys could have basic health coverage bought and paid for with existing tax dollars and WITHOUT raising existing taxes. Of course a few billionaires might have to drop to multimillionaire status and drug companies would hold you hostage, refusing to research new drugs and allowing people to die until you gave them back their Ferrari's, but thats just the cost of freedom right?

Sure it bothers us a lot.Washington is a stinking pile of Corruption.One of these days and probably this Century those Rich Pricks will get just what is coming to them.I would love to live long enough to see that sight.

The same thing the poor pricks have coming to them: cheap, Canadian-branded Viagra.

As a non-native speaker, I enjoyed all the puns (I have trouble with coming up with such things).Back on-topic: I'll just join in with all the other saying that method-of-use patent is pretty ridiculous. So when do we rally to finally take away the patent system from the corporations?

At least other douchebag pharmaceutical companies have the common courtesy to add sugar or paint thinner to their drug formulas and re-patent them as "new and improved." Not only are Pfizer being bastards, they're being lazy on top of it.

Great, so because they reject a claim of "give a pill that inhibits this enzyme" based on a prior inhibitor, and then they find that the cited study wasn't statistically significant, they set a new clock on the patent ? Or am I missing something in between ?

... and it is illegal to advertize canadian drugs in the US. Google paid a hefty fine for doing so. Apparently canadian pharmas are unregulated, dangerous poison makers.

Yes, getting a prescription filled in Canada is like playing Russian roulette. Without the beloved protection of the US supply chain the drugs manufactured in China and shipped to the US before being forwarded to Canada are of far sketchier than the ones Pfeizer has manufactured in China and shipped to the US alone... or that's what we're supposed to believe.

Yes, getting a prescription filled in Canada is like playing Russian roulette. Without the beloved protection of the US supply chain the drugs manufactured in China and shipped to the US before being forwarded to Canada are of far sketchier than the ones Pfeizer has manufactured in China and shipped to the US alone... or that's what we're supposed to believe.

The worst part is, its not just Pfizer and its not just Viagra. This is one of the reasons your medical system bankrupts people, because your patent laws allow drug companies to profit immensely off the sick and the weak, all in the name of "capitalism" and "freedom". Our taxes arent that far off from the US, and yet we spend less per capita on health care AND provide basic coverage to everyone, guaranteed and paid for via our taxes. Keep that in mind Americans, if you could manage to get your politicians to budget properly(AKA spend less on torture and war) and change a few patent laws regarding various meds, you guys could have basic health coverage bought and paid for with existing tax dollars and WITHOUT raising existing taxes. Of course a few billionaires might have to drop to multimillionaire status and drug companies would hold you hostage, refusing to research new drugs and allowing people to die until you gave them back their Ferrari's, but thats just the cost of freedom right?

Wow, so much of this is so far off, it's hard to know where to start, fan fave or not.

1. Drug spending in the USA for the last three or four decades has been at 10+/-2%. For 2010, the most recent year I could find (http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics- ... lights.pdf) it's (gasp) 10%. Ergo, drug prices are NOT the primary driver of runaway US healthcare costs. 2. "...drug companies would hold you hostage, refusing to research new drugs..." Excuse me, kindly provide an economic model for spending billions of dollars on exceedingly risky drug R&D when governments - such as those in Canada, the EU, and elsewhere - are going to mandate selling said drugs for cost of goods (plus a small percentage). The alternative, if the drug companies balk, is that said governments reserve the right to then seize and assign the IP to Teva, or somebody in India, or wherever, who will sell the drug for cost of goods (plus a small percentage - but of course with zero risk, and zero cost of development).3. Given point (2), the real problem with drug prices in the US is that we in the US are subsidizing all the development costs for the EU, Canada, Japan, and so forth that have price controls. We're paying the price for you. Your tone of moral superiority is sadly misplaced.4. Given point (2), is it any wonder that so much of the world's drug research is taking place in the US when it's the only place you can actually hope to get any return on your ridiculously risky drug research investment?

When fine French wines are required to be sold in the USA for the cost of grapes (plus a small percentage), or BMWs similarly sold for cost of goods plus a bit - BY LAW - maybe we can have a more equitable conversation on this topic. Plus I'll be driving a much better car. In the meantime, there are plenty of other drivers of the excessive healthcare costs in the USA (that would be at least another 90% worth). Consider, for example, all the for-profit insurance companies required to rebate money to their customers under the ACA because they couldn't manage to keep their overhead under 30% of total expenditures (which IIRC is about an order of magnitude higher overhead than Medicare).

Let me know when you start subsidizing us as much as we're subsidizing you, then we can talk.